A global pandemic has forced Joe Biden to wage a presidential campaign from his home in Delaware—where he says he hasn’t yet been tested for the coronavirus. As Democrats question whether his campaign is doing enough to inject himself into the national conversation, Biden’s team insists that he can be on any screen he wants, whenever he wants—even if he can’t pose for selfies in person.

On Wednesday, Biden took his campaign to another corner of the internet, appearing on Good Luck America, Snapchat’s daily political show hosted by Peter Hamby. For all the questions about the 77-year-old’s digital savvy, this week’s interview marks his third appearance on the Snapchat show since 2016. We’re posting Hamby’s full Q&A here, which has been lightly edited.

Vanity Fair: Hello, sir, thanks for joining us.

Joe Biden: Thanks for having me.

So did you crush a Peloton workout this morning?

No, no, this morning I just lifted a little bit. Jill [Biden] occupied the Peloton this morning.

I want to start off with a couple of questions about the youth vote. It needs to be said that not every young person, every voter under 30, is a Bernie [Sanders] supporter. But there is a prevailing narrative out there among young progressives that you and [Donald] Trump are kind of indistinguishable. It reminds me of the 2000 election, and [George] Bush and [Al] Gore were running against each other, and the young left, a lot of whom voted for [Ralph] Nader, thought the other two guys were the same. What do you say to the 19-year-old out there who thinks that you’re just the lesser of two evils?

Well, first of all, the data doesn’t show that, as you know. There was a large, large survey done by John Della Volpe up at Harvard [that] shows we have as much authenticity—we’re viewed as being authentic and bringing excitement as Bernie did. But now look, here’s where I come down. Young people want the truth and they want authenticity. No one doubts I mean what I say. I sometimes say more than I mean, but no one doubts I mean what I say. And younger Americans have had a really tough run of it. Millennials came of age defined by 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, losing 80,000-odd jobs a month. Generation Z has grown up at a time of school shootings, crushing student debt, broken politics. So, attacking student debt, making college affordable—start by immediately forgiving a minimum of $10,000 in student debt, [making] two-year community college free, four-year public college for families making under $125,000 free, tackling climate. There’s a whole range of things that I think can be done that not only get us out of this mess in terms of recovery as we get to the recovery stage, but deal with the institutional problems that exist and have existed for some time.

Speaking of Harvard, the Shorenstein Center up at Harvard did an analysis of all of the anti-Biden memes out there on the internet. According to them, the top three slogans they’re seeing, this is from the left and the right, are Dementia Joe, Sleepy Joe, Creepy Joe. Barack Obama reportedly said last week that his daughters had been showing him anti-Biden TikToks. Basically, there’s an entire discourse on the internet right now that’s painting you as creepy and old and out of touch and kind of lame. How do you fight back against that?

[Chuckles] I can hardly wait to get onto the stage with Donald Trump. Look, I certainly miss being out on the trail connecting face-to-face to people. Trump is a master at laying nicknames on people and it’s this whole deal. But the vast majority of the voters out there, including young people, are not getting all their news from the internet. But I’m trying to compete there. We’re getting started late in the comparative sense. One hundred and two million video views across social media platforms since mid-March for me. And in addition to that, we’re trying to get out with a message that relates to the reality of what people are facing. Look at all these young people now who were getting out of high school, they were doing part-time jobs, they’re driving Ubers, they’re doing a whole range of things. The world’s changing, but we haven’t changed to accommodate their needs. And I think it’s just important to speak to that. And in terms of energy, I don’t have any problem comparing my energy level to Donald Trump, who I’m really resisting giving a nickname to.

But how do you compete on the internet? There’s so many people giving you unsolicited advice, which I’m sure makes your staffers very happy, about how to fight back online. What do you need to do there?

Well, I’m sure we can do better on the internet. I’m positive of that. But if you notice, the more they write about the internet, the more my poll numbers go up, in terms of beating Trump. Nothing’s changed. We keep getting further and further ahead. So I’m not suggesting we can’t get better in the internet and social media platforms, but the fact is that we’re trying. Recent events—the Instagram question and answer with one of the leading soccer players in the world, the head of our women’s soccer team. The latest episode of the Here’s the Deal podcast with Andrew Yang talking about inclusive economy. Virtual travel days in Florida. We’re trying to get better with it. I can hardly wait to get out of being on my back porch here. What I’m trying to do is play by the rules, the rules set by the governors and others that I not be out. That we be socially keeping ourselves back right now. But I’m looking forward to the time as this begins to loosen up, to be able to go out and campaign and hold rallies and do the rest.

So on the topic of the economy, how do you make the argument that the recession, the depression, the massive unemployment we’re seeing is Donald Trump’s fault? I mean, it seems pretty reasonable to think that, right now at least, the job numbers are owed to the virus.

Well, if you take a look at it before that, the young weren’t doing very well, period, under Donald Trump. Let’s get that part straight—number one. Number two, you had an awful lot of people. You had over 55% of the middle class saying that they didn’t think their children would even make the same income they would make. Never reached their point. He’s been trying to get rid of health care. A lot of those young people were able to have their health care to stay on until age 26 on their parents’ policy because of Obamacare. He’s out there trying to get rid of it. Look, young people are afraid right now. There’s tremendous uncertainty, but people are very worried and there’s good reason to be. That’s why we have to act. We have to make sure we have access to health care. And there’s ways to do that.

We have to come out of this god-awful situation and build an economy that’s fairer to everybody. You know, every gig worker, as I said, should have access to unemployment insurance for example. We have to reform the system. We have a chance to do that now. And people are getting out of school not having a graduation ceremony taking place. They have no way to pay for their student debt, and they can’t have their jobs. So we have to deal with the things that are going to create those significant jobs going forward. A generation is taking a real kick in the teeth and we’ve got to give them some help. But we have a chance to institutionally change the way this economy functions once we get by this god-awful pandemic.

So on that topic, how do you use a stimulus package, how do you govern to institutionally change and shift the economy and the safety net? You helped lead the country out of the last recession with Obama. What would you have done differently than Trump, for instance, on the current stimulus?

Well, first of all, when I handled the Recovery Act, which was over $800 billion, almost a trillion dollars, and real serious people like you who covered it, pointed out we had less than four tenths of 1% of waste or fraud. I’ll tell you how we did it. We made sure we had an independent officer of the government who oversaw every single thing that was going on and could make it public, notwithstanding anything I would say or do. I met with that person once a week. We put together a team. I was on the phone, literally not figuratively, literally six to eight hours a day talking to over 150 mayors, every governor but one, most county executives saying, Here’s the money, but here’s what you can do with it. And they would say, well, for example, they’d say things like, Well, I’m going to build a polar bear park that will increase economic growth. I said, No. They said, Yes, I can do it. I said, Well, if you do it, I’m going to come out and hold a press conference and say you’re wasting money. It requires you to sit on it every single day. And guess what? The inspector general that was supposed to oversee the $2 trillion that got already appropriated—what did [President Trump] do? He got rid of him. There’s no one watching this. So the money was supposed to go to those small businesses. The folks on Main Street who have the restaurants, the hardware stores, little drug stores, all of that. They’re not getting the money that was designed for them. So you have to stay on top of this every single moment in order to get it done.

The other piece of this is, look—right now we’re dealing with stimulus. We’re just trying to keep everything from crashing even further. You know, we have already thousands of deaths right now. You have the highest unemployment rate [since the Great Depression]. I mean it’s just, it’s astounding what’s happening and what’s going on. The president isn’t even getting out the unemployment money for people. They’re hurting, they’re frightened, they’re scared. But once we get the stimulus moving, the way you rebuild the economy, you go out and say, Okay, every new housing project we build, we’re going to make sure that the project deals with climate change and is green. We’re going to make sure the trillion dollars are going—as the president said he was going to do when he got elected—for infrastructure, that every new highway is green. We’re going to make sure every new building built, you get a tax credit if you go toward making a green building, so that you’re not wasting heat and energy.

So there’s a whole range of things and all the experts point out that my proposal on a green economy, and others as well, will create 10 million new jobs. Good paying jobs. And also, all those young people who are unemployed right now, we should have a public health corps. Just like we had, you know, Volunteer for America. We can put together a hundred thousand people to track and trace. A major new public health initiative. There’s so many things we can do. We can get rid of some of the serious, serious prejudice that still exists within our system. I think I was the first person saying we should keep detailed records of the number of people in the African American community and Hispanic community who in fact have died, and either gotten COVID and or died from it. They are more likely if they’re in a county that is predominantly black, [three] times more likely to have contacted COVID, [six] times more likely to have died. I mean, it’s ridiculous. There’s so many things we can fix. I’m sorry to go on so long, but the blinders have been taken off here. The public now knows that the real heroes are those people out there stacking the shelves right now, making sure the food gets out, making sure that the mail gets delivered, making sure that we’re in a position where those doctors and nurses, first responders have the gear. Think how long it took them to even respond to that. What a wasted opportunity there was to get this under control.

I interviewed the mayor of Seattle a couple of weeks ago. Jenny Durkan, she’s a supporter of yours. I asked her about rent relief and she said basically the federal government should be in charge of helping people who have lost their jobs, make their rent payments, make their mortgage payments. Is it possible to do some kind of federal rent bailout?

Absolutely. There is. And we should. We should. And we should also deal with housing overall. For example, we’re in a position now where we have first-time homebuyers. When they get through this, you know, I provide a $15,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers. They don’t have enough money to be able to get the down payment to get started. Nobody should be paying more than 30% of their income for rent. There should be rent forgiveness and there should be mortgage forgiveness now in the middle of this crisis. Forgiveness. Not paid later, forgiveness. It’s critically important to people who are in the lower-income strata.

Governors aren’t doing that.

No, the governors can’t do that because they have to balance their budget. Look here, I know you know this because you’ve written about it. I apologize. I don’t mean to sound instructive. But you know that one of the biggest things that happened in the Recovery Act was we were able to bail the states out of the loss of tens of thousands of schoolteachers’ jobs, tens of thousands of police jobs, tens of thousands of firefighters. Why? Because they have to balance their budget. So when all of this hits and all this, all this is shutting down, tax revenues are cratering, et cetera. They don’t have the wherewithal just to keep teachers on a payroll. They don’t have the wherewithal to keep the level of their police force or their firefighters or their first responders up. That’s the responsibility of the federal government. This is, the president said, this is like a war. He’s the commander in chief. Well, he should act like a commander in chief. I talked about one of the reasons I was running was to restore the soul of America. We’re seeing the soul of America right now. Look at all those people out there busting their rear ends, risking their lives, some losing their lives, all to help other people. Just doing things that are incredible. Incredible. This country is incredible. There’s nothing that we can’t do if we do it together and it’s time the president get in the game and start to help.

Are you personally worried about getting the coronavirus? I mean, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

No, no, I’m not. But I’ll tell you what they do. There’s a lot of Secret Service that are assigned to me. I’m abiding by the rules the governor set in this state. So I’m staying in my home and my yard. But all the Secret Service folks, I’m told, have been tested. My mask is over here. I have that mask on when I’m not talking to you. On Mother’s Day, my deceased son’s wife and two children live as far as the crow flies. Three quarters of a mile through the woods over here. They all came over. All of us had our masks on. We sat out here in the lawn, we had Mother’s Day dinner, but we couldn’t hug one another.

Vice President [Mike] Pence’s staffer just got it. I mean, if you get elected and you’re in the transition and you’re in the White House…

Don’t get me wrong. As I said, they told me, everyone in the Secret Service and this shift has been tested. Everybody comes into my home. The people who are helping me today. They wear gloves, rubber gloves, and a mask. Every morning I have an hour brief from the public health people. And what they’re telling me is they think that I should move [in] the direction [of] the White House, that anyone coming in should be tested. And I should be tested. I haven’t been tested. So that’s, that’s in play. We’ll see how that goes.

The mayor of Los Angeles says that he doesn’t see sports or concerts in Los Angeles until 2021. With that kind of public guidance from a Democrat in consultation with health officials, can the Democratic convention actually happen in August in person?

I don’t know. I think we have to follow the science. We’ve got to follow the rules. We’ve got to follow what the experts tell us. I hope we can. It may have to be smaller. It may be in a different venue. I just don’t know. Look, you know, it’s a false choice between, you either choose public health or the economy. It’s a false choice. And an effective plan to beat the virus is how we get the economy back to strength. Trump has not been doing the hard work needed to get us there. Look, we all want to reopen. We all want to be safe, get testing in place, get workplace protections in place. Make sure our seniors and other vulnerable populations are protected. But you know, we’ve got to get money to true small businesses instead of businesses that are worth a billion dollars that are publicly traded. There’s a lot we have to do in the meantime, and I’m worried the president hasn’t seemed to learn any lessons to move more rapidly than he has in the first four or five or six months.

A CBS poll last week of Democrats said that “crisis-management experience” was the number one trait that they’re looking for in a running mate. Given that, does your pick have to be someone who’s had statewide or federal experience before?

Well, that’s underway now. There’s more than a handful of really qualified women out there we are looking at. I’ve had significant foreign policy experience and significant crisis-management experience. And I think it’s a useful thing for whoever my vice president will be. But the other piece of that is, as Barack and I talk about it, I’m looking for someone who has strengths that I don’t have as much. I’m not afraid to go out and find someone who knows more than I know about a subject. And Barack used to always kid. He talked about, we make up for each other’s weaknesses. He didn’t have many. I had more weaknesses than he did. But all kidding aside, you know, the reason he picked me, as he pointed out, was he said he was convinced that I’d never walk in the Oval Office and be intimidated by the office. I’d always tell him the truth and I’d always do it privately. I’d tell him what I think. And that’s the kind of thing I’m looking at. The only thing I know a little bit about is the office of the vice presidency. And I’m looking for someone who I can feel comfortable having as the last person in the room giving me advice.

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